Describes the historical background of the Universal Exposition and offers brief profiles of the American artists who exhibited there.

The 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris is famous as a turning point in the history of French music, and modern music generally. This book explores the ways in which music was used, exhibited, listened to, and written about during the Exposition universelle. It also reveals the sociopolitical uses of music in France during the 19th century.

This elegant and theoretically informed book, illustrated with forty-five photographs, explores the cultural significance of six exhibitions or new museum installations, all opening in Paris between mid-1937 and early 1938: the commercially oriented world's fair titled L'Exposition Internationale des Art et Techniques; the historical Musée des Monuments Français; the ethnographic Musée de l'Homme; two massive art retrospectives, one sponsored by the state of France and the other by the municipality of Paris; and L'Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme.James D. Herbert capitalizes on the proximity of these disparate exhibits to show how they competed with and yet also complemented one another in visually rendering the full scope of human accomplishment through time and across the globe. In this task, Herbert argues, they both succeeded and failed in interesting and productive ways. He asserts that the exhibitions projected and, in a sense, created (created precisely through the act of projection) the real world that they ostensibly only represented.In fact, Herbert argues, the exhibitions developed a particular sense of French national identity—one that, in managing to be at the same moment both inwardly focused and beneficently expansive, would present a vivid contrast to the growing German nationalism of the Third Reich. His epilogue takes a final look at these issues from the perspective of Jean Cocteau's 1950 film Orphée. A ground-breaking work in cultural history, Paris 1937, with its insightful examination of objects from a variety of fields, is a pioneering text in the field of visual studies.

"In essays by Diane P. Fischer, Linda J. Docherty, Robert W. Rydell, Gabriel P. Weisberg, and Gail Stavitsky, Paris 1900 examines the campaign sponsored by the U.S. Department of State proving the existence of a distinct "American school" of art and refuting earlier French criticism that American art was primarily a reflection of French art. At this exposition, the McKinley administration's crusade emphasized paintings that exuded "American character," such as images of virile men, wholesome women, pristine landscapes, and technologically superior cities. Paintings by still-powerful American expatriates were also included: Exhibiting only native themes would have smacked of a provincialism inconsistent with the new outward-looking agenda of American foreign policy."--BOOK JACKET. "Featuring more than 140 color and black-and-white illustrations, Paris 1900 is the companion volume to a major exhibition of over 80 paintings, sculptures, and decorative art objects at The Montclair Art Museum, which will travel later to museums in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Columbus, Ohio; Madison, Wisconsin; and Paris, France."